…the opportunity to work on a fantastic project with a top writer, combining so many things that I love…

Speedy portraits of some lucky friends and their children. Digital, 2012

…several portrait studies…

Experiments in scifi-esque landscapes. Digital 2012.

…studies, stuff and nonsense and

Work in progress shot of my illustration for the LIEDEKIJN exhibition. Digital, 2012.

Continued progress on my illustration for the upcoming and fantastic Liedekijn exhibition in Canberra, 2013. I was lucky enough to get the scene where the heroine is slowly breaking out of the murderer’s romantic spell.

Some explanation: Liedekijn is a sequential exhibition telling the story of the murderous spirit Heer Halewijn and the adventurous maiden Machteld. Each artist involved in the project illustrates a different page from the story, and by our powers combined the illustrations all come together to tell one glorious story. It’s a collaborative work of art featuring some amazing artists and managed by the same wonderful ringleader of last year’s Beginnings anthology project (and featuring her lovely watercolours!), so it’s good. 🙂

If you aren’t able to come see the exhibition in person next year, you can always buy a copy of the artbook. And until the end of December 2012, you can pre-order the artbook for the extremely worthy price of $10. (If you’re holding out til 2013 to make sure that $10 won’t be lost to any world-ending disasters, not to worry – throughout Jan 2013 you can still pre-order the artbook for $12, but after that you’ll have to test your luck at the exhibition itself, or hold out for the slim possibility of post-exhibition leftovers!)

So in between speedpaints I like to remind myself that I can draw from imagination. And try to.animated gif showing the various layers of the current painting I’m working on. I’m still sorting out the hair and hands for this value test.

Most of this is done without reference, or very loosely to reference. I did read a Ron Lemen tutorial for the anatomy, and I’m using a photo of Yuko Ogura (who looks just how I’ve always pictured Mimi) for the face. Life drawing has come in handy for thinking about how things work, too!

To tide you over until the next instalment of life drawing, here are two other painting studies I’ve been working on:

anticipation - painting WIP 2011 08 06

a not referenced (and clearly so!) quick painting study that turned into something that demanded a fair bit of time and attention.

all it's missing is the che beret

a quick painting study 2011 08 07

Quick painting study, eyeballed tones and shapes from a photo reference but pretty much making up the colours myself from referencing painting tutorials and trying to learn more about painting colour theory. This is at the three hour mark, I think.

Late posts for the latest Monday night life drawing! Mostly because I wasn’t very happy with what I did this time.

The first drawing took roughly forty minutes. Thirty minutes into this we realised we’d forgotten to turn on a strong light source, so my shading looks like a mixed of the strong shadows and the more neutral ones from the start of the session. Not a terribly flattering drawing, unfortunately. With the second picture, I was working more from the new light source and pushed a bit harder with how much I can do with an ink wash.

The more life drawing sessions I attend, the more I learn about myself, my art preferences and different tips I can work into other things. For example, as much as I love vellum for markers, I do not like it so much for soft, smudgeable charcoals and pencil washes.

To fill out this post a bit more, here’s a screenshot from the rough what was going to be my latest piece for my current assignment in class:

An early draft from an environment design 3d modelling+texturing assignment

This would have been my latest piece if I hadn’t lost the file anyway :B